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Mark Zuckerberg: AI May Soon Replace Mid-Level Engineers at Meta
Techstory ^ | 01 13 2025 | Harikrishnan A

Posted on 01/13/2025 11:37:12 AM PST by yesthatjallen

The tech industry is on the verge of a major transformation, with artificial intelligence (AI) stepping into roles traditionally held by human software engineers. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed that AI could soon take over coding tasks previously handled by mid-level engineers, signaling a dramatic change for the profession.

During a conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience, Zuckerberg shared that Meta, along with other tech giants, is working on AI systems that will handle coding duties. He predicted that by 2025, AI would be capable of performing tasks typically done by mid-level engineers.

This shift marks a major turning point in the software development landscape, where AI could increasingly take over the coding process, potentially reducing the need for human engineers to write code manually.

Cost Reduction Through AI-Powered Engineering

The transition to AI-driven coding is not just about advancing technology; it’s also a strategic move to cut costs. Mid-level software engineers at Meta currently earn six-figure salaries, and if AI takes over coding tasks, it could result in significant savings for the company.

SNIP

(Excerpt) Read more at techstory.in ...


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: ai; engineers; meta; zuckerberg
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1 posted on 01/13/2025 11:37:12 AM PST by yesthatjallen
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To: All

Cool, let’s stop importing Indians


2 posted on 01/13/2025 11:43:15 AM PST by escapefromboston (Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.)
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To: yesthatjallen

Better to replace Zuckface.


3 posted on 01/13/2025 11:43:31 AM PST by sasquatch (Do NOT forget Ashli Babbit! c/o piytar)
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To: yesthatjallen

4 posted on 01/13/2025 11:44:44 AM PST by Angelino97
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To: yesthatjallen
Re: "Mid-level engineers"

Also Known As: H-1B

5 posted on 01/13/2025 11:47:34 AM PST by zeestephen (Trump Landslide? Kamala lost Wisc, Mich, and Penn, by 230,000 votes.)
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To: yesthatjallen

Good! Artificial Intelligence has got to be better than actual ignorance.


6 posted on 01/13/2025 11:49:19 AM PST by Texas Eagle ("Throw me to the wolves, and I'll return leading the pack"- Donald J. Trump)
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To: escapefromboston

Like the person who wrote this article, LOL!


7 posted on 01/13/2025 11:53:20 AM PST by quantim (Victory is not relative, it is absolute.)
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To: yesthatjallen
...While AI excels at automating repetitive tasks, it lacks the creativity and problem-solving abilities that human engineers bring to the table...

Money quote.
8 posted on 01/13/2025 11:56:17 AM PST by ComputerGuy
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To: yesthatjallen

thanks zuks ...take some put options on meta


9 posted on 01/13/2025 11:57:00 AM PST by spokeshave (Proud Boys, Angry Dads. Grumpy Grandads & Curmudgeons)
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To: yesthatjallen

Learn to coal mine


10 posted on 01/13/2025 11:57:21 AM PST by MNDude
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To: yesthatjallen

Something to keep in mind — a lot of young people are frustrated by the current disparity of low wages and high costs. They have it worse than people did 30 years ago. Wages just haven’t been going up, but home prices sure have, and car prices, etc. It’s tough to be starting out your career and to be living in Mom’s basement because you can’t afford rent.

But — some might say — if you work hard at your entry-level job, you will be noticed. You will rise up. You will get into Middle Management, and then later you might get one of those corner offices. Well, a lot of young people are realizing that this is just a lie. Middle Management? Where did that go? There is no Middle Management. Not like there used to be. So, how do you move up from your lowly entry-level job. Answer: You don’t. You’ll be living in Mom’s basement your whole life.


11 posted on 01/13/2025 11:59:04 AM PST by ClearCase_guy
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To: escapefromboston

You think this will bring Americans back? This is just one of many steps to get rid of us all in all occupations. Next is the 3-D printers making houses (it is here), no construction jobs. Nobody stops to think what our grandkids will do for a living? Glad I won’t be here to see it.


12 posted on 01/13/2025 11:59:53 AM PST by Resolute Conservative
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To: yesthatjallen

Look who wrote the story. A dot.


13 posted on 01/13/2025 12:01:12 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: yesthatjallen

I wrote this just yesterday on FReepmail.

To be completely accurate, what the Tech Bros are looking for, is a way to replace entire floors of programmers (and their associate equipment, support personnel, managers, and project managers) with a couple of addled H1-Bs typing simple 1-sentence prompts.

The fool themselves by believing the carefully curated and cherry-picked demos, which can do that ro VERY simple web pages using known frameworks; or recreating knock-offs of known computer games; or standard, simply UNIX shell scripts.

This started when AI could “reproduce” artwork in a flash (if you ignored things like six fingers, or dogs with extra legs) — not that AI was good, but it coudl get pictures close enough that the human eyes and brain, with their intense abstractive capabilities, could correctly infer what the program was “trying to do”.

The tech bros got ahead of their skis, and said, “Let’s try it woth programs”.

It works with very simple programs; but with business logic, or even straightforward but. moderately involved “by rote” code, the AI hallucinations kick in, and you spend as much time correcting, pruning, and debugging, or configuring the prompt, as you would have writing the code from scratch.

Which defeats the entire value proposition.

And the vulnerability is that the top tech companies have spent $100 billion in 2023/2024 on AI Infrastructure: which would have been worh it, IF they could become able, for real, to replace all human programmers.

But now all that money on NVIDIA chipsets is a flaming tire around their neck: they can’t FORCE their customers to buy AI services when it isn’t worh the money.

And because of Moore’s Law (chip speeds double every so many years), they have to monetize their AI *RIGHT NOW*.

Because if they don’t, a competitor can just come in with this year’s NVIDIA chips, and break even by charing half the price for AI, ‘cause the chips cost them half as much.

(And this says nothing of the risks going foraward, in two ways.

1) What happens as companies change servers, operating systems, or as they upgrade between different versions of languages, and old code becomes deprecated? To say nothing of malware / viruses?

2) As humn programmers become phased out, who will maintian, upgrade, and debug the code when nobody knows the language anymore? All the low- and medium-level jobs, where humans have learned the language, have been phased out. And the H1-B prompt kiddies, are bad enough now when they pretend to know the code but don’t, and get hired anywway because they’re cheap. What happens when they literally have no clude?

3) “Grey goo” — what happens wnen all the existing code bases, from which AI plagiarizes its solutions, are all themselves AI-generated? (To say nothing of the risks of enterprising hackers seeding in easy backdoors, which will then be propagated widely, enabling mass ransomware and other mischief, which will be harder to counter since very few people will have any idea how the code works, or even where to look?


14 posted on 01/13/2025 12:04:08 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: yesthatjallen

This is why the H1-B controversy just seems so pointless to me - the whole issue is going to be moot within a few years. My guess is that in five years, a significant percentage of all new code will be written by LLMs in response to carefully crafted prompts composed by PMs and solution engineers. And in ten years, most new code will be written by GenAI tools.


15 posted on 01/13/2025 12:05:55 PM PST by AnotherUnixGeek
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To: yesthatjallen

How will there be high-level engineers if there are no mid-level engineers. Seems like planned failure.


16 posted on 01/13/2025 12:15:33 PM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

See my post #15 this thread.


17 posted on 01/13/2025 12:17:11 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: grey_whiskers

Yep.


18 posted on 01/13/2025 12:23:42 PM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: Resolute Conservative

For right now 3D printing is for the walls.

The rest of the house has to be finished out by plumbers, electricians, painters and the like.

Some day those might just get replaced by robots, but not yet.

Where I live it’s not Americans doing the framing of houses anyhow.


19 posted on 01/13/2025 12:36:09 PM PST by packagingguy
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To: yesthatjallen

I’ve been in software for almost 40 years now. In two years I’m retiring and it can’t come soon enough.

-SB


20 posted on 01/13/2025 1:13:17 PM PST by Snowybear (Liberalism is a mental disorder)
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